Music for First Sunday of Advent

...at my parish for the Ordinary Form of the Mass. Aristotle has posted the music at his new parish. I've tried to here, but haven't been as faithful. New Year's resolution is to try being consistent.

Processional Hymn: Come, Thou Long Expected Jesus
Introit: To you I lift up my soul--Fr. Columba Kelly
Kyrie: Orbis Factor
Psalm: Esguerra/Chabanel
Gospel Acclamation: Chant
Offertory Hymn: Creator of the Stars of Night
Offertory Antiphon: To you I lift up my soul--Fr. Arbogast
Communion Antiphon: The Lord shall give his benefits--Fr. Kelly
Communion hymns: Shepherd of Souls; Alma Mater Redemptoris
Recessional: Lift Up Your Heads, Ye Mighty Gates

Chris Matthews is deranged

...calls West Point "the enemy camp" referring to Mr. Obama speaking there. Matthews decried the "lack of warmth".

The Architect as Totalitarian

~by Theodore Dalrymple. Hat tip to Elena Maria. Just to refresh your memory on an old post, here's a concrete monstrosity, St. Gregorius in Aachen, Germany. Compare it to Burgos Cathedral.

Le Corbusier was to architecture what Pol Pot was to social reform. In one sense, he had less excuse for his activities than Pol Pot: for unlike the Cambodian, he possessed great talent, even genius. Unfortunately, he turned his gifts to destructive ends, and it is no coincidence that he willingly served both Stalin and Vichy. Like Pol Pot, he wanted to start from Year Zero: before me, nothing; after me, everything. By their very presence, the raw-concrete-clad rectangular towers that obsessed him canceled out centuries of architecture. Hardly any town or city in Britain (to take just one nation) has not had its composition wrecked by architects and planners inspired by his ideas.

Writings about Le Corbusier often begin with an encomium to his importance, something like: “He was the most important architect of the twentieth century.” Friend and foe would agree with this judgment, but importance is, of course, morally and aesthetically ambiguous. After all, Lenin was one of the most important politicians of the twentieth century, but it was his influence on history, not his merits, that made him so: likewise Le Corbusier.

Yet just as Lenin was revered long after his monstrosity should have been obvious to all, so Le Corbusier continues to be revered.

Read the rest.

Art and Beauty against the Politicized Aesthetic

~more from the Treasonous Clerk, James Matthew Wilson. In First Principles:

Art speaks a suffering that cannot be spoken in the discursive language of society without losing the truth of its content. One is often disgusted with the modern propensity to provide technocratic or juridical solutions to moral or intellectual problems; in the age of such continuous “ameliorations,” art provides the useless and inassimilable language that does not betray the experiential truth of its meaning. The limitation of this answer to the content of the truth of art is precisely its historicism; suffering is the underbelly of an age of rationally distributed delights. As Adorno instructs, its teleology is immanent and particular, and so art’s identity is distinct in the age of enlightenment from what it might be at other times, at least as a matter of degree.

Can art make eloquent something more profound than the suffering produced by, but excluded from, rational history? Perhaps surprisingly, Adorno gestures toward such a fundament, located precisely in that which modern aesthetic theory is thought to have transcended: natural beauty....

...Art thus strives to make present to us a primordial truth that—while never simple, pure, or “immediate” as the romantics or modern art-religion advocates claim—touches the reality of the human condition buried beneath ideology. Art’s autonomy from modern use reminds us of, or reveals to us, the autonomy of the natural world in whose bosom all human beings uneasily live.

Pope Benedict on Mary

~a new book from Ignatius Press. Another one for my wish list:

Pope Benedict offers in-depth, inspirational reflections on the unique spiritual role Mary has as the Mother of the Savior, showing her to be the universal “woman” that Jesus calls her in the Gospels, his mother that God made the spiritual mother of all mankind. Using Biblical references of Mary as “full of grace” and the “woman clothed with the sun”, Pope Benedict emphasizes that Mary’s main role is to lead us to union with Jesus, to help us know and love him much better and to be his true followers.

Suspending Latin Mass in Calgary

...this is pathetically sad. From the Charlotte Examiner:

The Bishop, as published on the diocesan website, made drastic and forceful measures in the face of the Swine Flu outbreak. Mandatory as of November 9th, the bishop suspended communion on the tongue and from the chalice, stopped shaking hands at the sign of peace, removed the holy water from the fonts, as well as some minor non liturgical changes.

When FSSP told the bishop they were unable to comply, the result was a notice that the EF was suspended for the duration of the restrictions.

According to Catholic Family News, the bishop has been notified of the CDWDS notification regarding this matter. Allegedly, the bishop replied: "I am well aware of what the Congregation decided but quite frankly, it is not their call. It is mine."

Advent: Visitatio

First read this on Papa Benedetto Forum. Pope Benedict's thoughts on Advent:

In the language of the ancient world, it was a technical term used to indicate the arrival of a functionary, the visit of the king or emperor to a province. But it could also mean the arrival of divinity, who emerges from hiding to manifest itself with power, or whose presence is celebrated in worship.

Christians adopted the word Advent to express their relationship with Jesus Christ: Christ is the King, who has entered this poor 'province' called earth to make a visit to everyone. In the feast of His coming, all participate who believe in Him, all who believe in His presence in the liturgical assembly.

The word adventus was substantially intended to say: God is here, he has not retired from the world, he has not left us alone. Even if we cannot see and touch Him as we can with sensible realities, He is here and comes to visit us in multiple ways.

The significance of the word Advent thus also comprehends that of visitatio, which means a visit pure and simple. In this case, it is a visit by God: He enters my life and addresses himself to me. Yet we all experience in daily life that we have little time for the Lord, and little time even for ourselves. We end up being absorbed by 'doing'.

Is it not perhaps true that often it is this activity that possesses us, that it is society with its multiple interests that monopolizes our attention? Is it not perhaps true that we devote too much time to diversions and amusements of various kinds? Sometimes, things 'overwhelm' us.

Advent, this important liturgical time that we are beginning, invites us to pause in silence to understand a presence. It is an invitation to understand that the single events of the day are signs that God addresses to us, signs of the attention that he has for each of us.

How often God makes us perceive something of his love! To keep an interior diary, so to speak, of this love would be a beautiful and healthy task in our life.

Advent invites and stimulates us to contemplate the Lord who is present. Should not the certainty of his presence help us to see the world with different eyes? Should it not help us to consider all of our existence as a 'visit', as a way in which He can come to us and be near to us in every situation?

Another fundamental element of Advent is waiting - which is at the same time, hope. Advent impels us to understand the sense of time and history as kairos, as a favorable occasion for our salvation.

Jesus has illustrated this mysterious reality in many parables: in the story of the servants asked to await the return of the master; in the parable of the virgins awaiting the spouse; or in that about sowing and harvesting.

In life, man is in a constant state of waiting: As a child, he wants to grow; as an adult, he aims for realization and success; as he advances in age, he aspires for a deserved rest. But the time comes when he discovers that he has hoped too little, if beyond professional or social position, he has nothing more to hope for.

Hope marks the path of humanity, but for Christians, it is inspired by a certainty: The Lord is present in the course of our life, he accompanies us and one day he will dry our tears. One day, not far, everything will find its fulfillment in the Kingdom of God, a kingdom of justice and peace.

But there are different ways of waiting.

Read the complete text at Zenit

White House dismisses Climategate

...well, of course, it would. Too much invested in this catastrophic anthropogenic global warming scheme. It's too delicious a temptation to yield one's subjects to a one-world governing body that curtails freedoms for the good of the earth.

But White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs dismissed the controversy on Monday, saying that most people don’t dispute global warming.

“In the order of several thousand scientists have come to the conclusion that climate change is happening,” Gibbs said. “I don’t think that any of that is, quite frankly among most people, in dispute.”

Well, now, Mr Gibbs, you don't have much credibility after the manufactured "jobs saved/created" business that you clowns cooked up at the White House....where were those districts again? Oh, yes, in the 57 states that President Obama traveled as candidate. I see.

And I'm supposed to believe your scoffing. Riiiiiight.

Oh, by the way, there are more scientists skeptical of catastrophic AGW than the tyrants-in-crusader clothing.

Must suck carbon from air to avert disaster

~via Times Online. The sky is falling, disaster is coming and it's man's fault!!!!! The IPCC chief says:

“There are enough technologies in existence to allow for mitigation,” he said. “At some point we will have to cross over and start sucking some of those gases out of the atmosphere.”

How? Here's how:

Dr Pachauri raised the prospect of so-called geo-engineering, whereby carbon dioxide is actively stripped from the atmosphere. A range of techniques have been proposed including seeding artificial clouds over oceans to reflect sunlight back into space, sowing the oceans with iron ore to boost plankton growth and using carbon capture and storage technology to fix emissions from power stations.

Dr. Pachauri, dude, planting a tree is, erm, even simpler. Oh, wait, you're thinking ahead of me here. Artificial trees, you say?

These 12m boxes, filled with absorbent materials, soak up and store carbon. The devices, which could be placed by roads, would be emptied regularly and the carbon buried. About 100,000 artificial trees would require about 600 hectares of land, but the carbon that they remove from the atmosphere would be equivalent to all the non-stationary and dispersed emissions to the UK

I still say planting REAL trees is easier. Oh, and did you check those Climategate e-mails by any chance? You have? And you say, it's, gasp! A corporate conspiracy! Of course, corporations are always at fault!

Dr Pachauri, speaking to The Times on Saturday before travelling to Paris to brief President Sarkozy, suggested that the fossil fuel lobby could be behind a hacking incident last month that led to the publication of thousands of leaked e-mails between climate scientists. He said that it was entirely possible that “corporate interests” had had a hand in the leak.

It's the leak, stupid. Right? Nothing about the FALSIFYING and other shenanigans that those climate scientists cooked up, right? Nothing to see, off we go to Copenhagen.

Just say NO! NOPEnhagen.

P.S. Note to scaremongers, why don't you try not breathing out if you're so concerned about CO₂ emissions. There's plenty of hot air coming out of you guys that's positively toxic for freedom-loving people. You want to know about conspiracy? Check the end of your nose.

Feast of St. Andrew

~from my various travels:


At the base of St. Peter's Dome, Vatican City


St. Andrew's, Scotland


Cathedral of Sant'Andrea, Amalfi



Relics at Sant'Andrea, Amalfi

A New Resource for Learning the Ordinary

...from the people that gave to us Chabanel Psalms, the Corpus Christi Watershed has unveiled the new site:

Saint Antoine Daniel Gregorian Chant Ordinaries

This site is great for learning the different Mass settings for the year. The site offers scores for each part of the Ordinary and also the different Credo settings. Free Kyriale organ settings are also included. In addition, mp3 sound files are provided so that you can hear what the chant sounds like.

Two companion sites which help a schola learn the Propers are (also from Corpus Christi Watershed):

ReneGoupil.org for the Extraordinary Form of the Mass

JoguesChant.org for the Ordinary Form of the Mass

One of the things my choir members have said to me, and they are untrained in music except for the three section leaders, is that neumes are so much easier to read than modern notation. You don't have to count, and all you have to know is your solfege.

One accomplishment we had this year with the Ordinary Form was to learn the Kyrie from Orbis Factor using the neumes.

Many, many thanks to Jeff Ostrowski and the good folks at Corpus Christi Watershed for their dedication in providing us with tools to re-enchant the Mass.

New Year's Eve

...liturgically speaking. This Sunday's Propers:

Introit: Ad te levavi animam meam: Deus meus in te confido, non erubescam: necque irrideant me inimici mei: etenim universi qui te exspectant, non confundentur. Ps. Vias tuas, Domine, demonstra mihi: et semitas tuas edoce me.

To you, my God, I lift my soul, I trust in you; let me never come to shame. Do not let my enemies laugh at me. No one who waits for you is ever put to shame.

Gradual: Univérsi, qui te exspéctant, non confundéntur, Dómine. ℣. Vias tuas, Dómine, notas fac mihi: et sémitas tuas édoce me.

All they, that wait on Thee, shall not be confounded, O Lord. ℣. Show, O Lord, Thy ways to me: and teach me Thy paths.

Offertory: Ad te Domine levavi animam meam: Deus meus, in te confido, non erubescam: necque irrideant me inimici mei: etenim universi qui te exspectant, non confundentur.

Unto you, O Lord, have I lifted up my soul; O my God, I trust in you, let me not be put to shame; do not allow my enemies to laugh at me; for nonw of those who are awaiting you will be disappointed.

Communion: Dominus dabit benignitatem: et terra nostra dabit fructum suum.

The Lord will give goodness: and our earth shall yield her fruit.

Happy New Year!

12 Days of Global Warming

The homilies of Pope Benedict XVI

~via Chiesa. Guess what I want for Christmas? Yes, you can access the homilies via the Holy See's website. But having a portable hard copy to stick in my back pack is just right!

ROME, November 27, 2009 – On the eve of Advent, a book has been released in Italy that collects the homilies by Benedict XVI in the liturgical year that just ended.

Each liturgical year runs from Advent to Advent. It is a grand sacramental narration that, from Mass to Mass, has this distinctive feature: it brings to fulfillment what it says. The protagonist of the narrative, Jesus, is not simply remembered, but is present and acts. The homilies are the key to understanding his presence and his actions. They say who he is and what he is doing today, "according to the Scriptures."

This, at least, is what is learned by listening to pope Joseph Ratzinger, an extraordinary homilist.

The homilies have become a distinguishing feature of the pontificate of Benedict XVI. They may be the least known and understood feature, but they are certainly the most revealing. He writes many of them himself, and improvises them at times; they are the most genuine manifestation of his mind.

He is dedicating himself to them to a great and growing extent. In the liturgical year just before the last one – also published in a volume one year ago by the same publisher – there were twenty-six homilies; in this new collection, there are forty.

And to these must be added the "little homilies" on the readings of the Mass of the day that the pope delivers on Sundays at the noon Angelus, all of them unmistakably his own creation, also reproduced in an appendix to this volume.

To facilitate the reading, each homily in the volume is followed by the texts of the biblical readings of the respective Mass. Benedict XVI, in fact, systematically refers to these texts. Not only that. When necessary, the reader will also find the other liturgical texts commented on by the pope in the homily: from the "Magnificat" of vespers to the "Te Deum" of the end of the year, from the "Victimae Pascali Laudes" of Easter to the "Veni Sancte Spiritus" of Pentecost.

Last Holy Thursday, pope Ratzinger made a long commentary on the canon – the central prayer of the Mass – that is read on that day in the liturgy of the Roman rite. And the reader will also find this canon transcribed in the book, both in Latin and in the vernacular.

The papal homilies are arranged according to the chronology of the liturgical year, Sunday by Sunday, feast by feast, from Advent to Christmas, to Lent, to Easter, to Pentecost and beyond. But under each title it is specified where and how the rite was celebrated: for example, in the Sistine Chapel, baptizing a few children, or in Jerusalem, in Bethlehem, in Cameroon, in Angola.

In each homily, in fact, Benedict XVI "situates" his preaching, applying it to the community to which he is speaking, or taking from the context a lesson for all.

Deo gratias

Someone did not get the memo

~AFP via Yahoo, here's a hysterically funny headline in light of Climategate:

Climate science update: from bad to worse

PARIS (AFP) – The planet could warm by seven degrees Celsius (10.8 degrees Fahrenheit) and sea levels could rise by more than a metre (3.25 feet) by 2100, scenarios that just two years ago were viewed as improbable, scientists said on Tuesday.

In the widest overview on global warming since a landmark report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report in 2007, the authors said manoeuvering room for tackling the carbon crisis was now almost exhausted.

Someone clue in these idiots, please.

Negative can be beautiful

...pardon while I gloat. I live in an area where O-glycemic index was so extreme we all needed an insulin infusion just from seeing all the gush-o-rama.

Crash and burn. About time.

And to rub salt in the wound:

Slightly Forlorn

The dangers of climate change

...so dire that they might affect spruce forests and pasta production. GASP!!! Everyone stop breathing right now and stop releasing CO₂ into the atmosphere.

The changes are likely to lead to the destruction of vast areas of spruce forest in central Europe and Scandinavia because of a rising population of bark beetles and other pests. Crops such as durum wheat used to produce pasta could begin vanishing from the Mediterranean basin, which will become too hot and dry for economic production.

Run away!!!

Climategate

By now, you must have heard about the leaking of email exchanges between scientists promoting the Global Warming Hysteria, more elegantly known as "Anthropogenic Global Warming". (Algore, pick the red courtesy phone, please). What?! You haven't read about it? Or maybe you have and you yawn and think, "What's the big deal. Bunch of skeptics hyperventilating. After all, Global Warming is established Science, Al Gore says so."

Climategate, the final nail in the coffin of AGW?

If you own any shares in alternative energy companies I should start dumping them NOW. The conspiracy behind the Anthropogenic Global Warming myth (aka AGW; aka ManBearPig) has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after a hacker broke into the computers at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (aka Hadley CRU) and released 61 megabites of confidential files onto the internet.

And what did our betters in the Mainstream Media report?

Ah yes, another routine data-theft story so dully reported – “the police had been informed, he added” – that you can’t even be bothered to reach the end to find out what information was stolen

More on Climategate here.Will it topple Copenhagen? Don't bet on it. Too much at stake. Politicians can't resist yet another way to subjugate the unwashed masses. And clearly, here's a winner, no? Been to a reduce-your-carbon-footprint party lately?

For previous posts on eco-hysteria, read here and here.

Unhinged

...wacky.

Oh, by the way, Carrie, we keep those aliens in a kind of Area 51 at the Vatican. It's called the Secret Archives. You might want to check them out there. Make sure you do bring your tinfoil mantilla. It's de rigeur when one visits the Vatican. You know, male domination and all.

Lovely

....just lovely. Who's running our government?

"...said the mistakes in crediting nonexistent congressional districts were caused by human error."

That's it, blame the peeps.

Pondering

...redesigning the theme of this 'blog. Inertia, though is strong. I have two other websites to finish (and those are major jobs). The last time I did anything major here was upgrade Blogger back in 2006? That's a long time to keep the same theme.

I wish Blogger had some of the features of Wordpress, like "Read more" and the editing capabilities for images.

Still, inertia is strong....three cheers for inertia! Good for one's day off.

Hail, True Body

Ave verum corpus has so many wonderful settings. Here's one that my former Anglo-Catholic parish choir used to sing a lot by William Byrd.

Organum: Ave Maria

More chant for your Monday.

Orbis Factor

~Hat tip to Ite ad Thomam. We use the Kyrie from Orbis Factor at our Novus Ordo Masses.

Exhortation

My pastor's exhortation to me last night for this week is: Be very careful of the Devil and his attacks.

Missa Solemnis is coming up this Sunday. It has been our experience that the Enemy likes to throw things our way ahead of a Missa Cantata or Missa Solemnis just to distract us, to make us stumble in our celebration of the traditional rite. Everything from power going out, to cars breaking down on the way, printers breaking down, people at strife with one another, attacking the health of altar servers, any opportunity where pride would have a chance to be puffed up.

Why does the Devil hate this Mass so?

Now, there's the Bishops' Conference debating ad nauseum the same tired, old excuses why we shouldn't have translations that are reverent, elevating, solemn. No, we must have street language. So that people can understand what's going on.

My question again for the bishops: We've had decades of wretched English translations and yet the slide in Catholics attending Mass and belief in the Real Presence has slipped precipitously. Why? If the Mass was more understandable in the dynamic translations we've all had to endure, why are the numbers plummeting?

Do we really understand the Mass? If we truly did, we would fall on our faces and our hearts would be pierced by the love so generously poured out for us. And we would do everything we can to be present in mind, body, and spirit.

Anima Christi, sanctifica me. Corpus Christi, salva me. Sanguis Christi, inebria me. Aqua lateris Christi, lava me. Passio Christi, conforta me. O bone Jesu, exaudi me. Intra tua vulnera absconde me. Ne permittas me separari a te. Ab hoste maligno defende me. In hora mortis meae voca me. Et iube me venire ad te, ut cum Sanctis tuis laudem te. In saecula saeculorum. Amen.

Soul of Christ, sanctify me. Body of Christ, save me. Blood of Christ, inebriate me. Water from the side of Christ, wash me. Passion of Christ, strengthen me. O good Jesus, hear me. Within Thy wounds hide me. Separated from Thee let me never be. From the malicious enemy defend me. In the hour of my death call me. And bid me come unto Thee. That I may praise Thee with Thy saints and with Thy angels. Forever and ever. Amen

For the record, the Devil has already sent his first salvo, and it is always my pride that is the first entry. Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison.